Disappearance of Erica Baker

Erica Nicole Baker was born June 22, 1989, in Kettering, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. She was 3 feet 11 inches tall and weighed 65 pounds, with blonde hair, hazel eyes, crooked front teeth, a tan-colored birthmark on her hip, and a scar on the inner arch of one foot. On the afternoon of February 7, 1999, she was last seen around 4:00 p.m. sitting on a bench near a pond in Indian Riffle Park, adjacent to the Kettering Recreation Complex, wearing a pink rain jacket, a pink Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes. She was reportedly upset that day because her father had forgotten to buy tickets to a father-daughter dance.

Erica's father, Greg Baker, had dropped her off at her mother Misty Baker's house around 3:00 p.m. About 30 minutes later, Erica asked her grandmother, Pam Schmidt, if she could walk the family's Shih Tzu; Schmidt eventually agreed. When Erica did not return, a search began, and around 4:30 p.m. the dog was found alone, dragging its leash. Erica has not been seen or heard from since.

Extensive searches were conducted by the Kettering Police Department with assistance from the FBI, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and local volunteers. Investigators used ground-penetrating radar in nearby wooded areas and drained a pond near her elementary school, but these efforts did not locate her. Early in the investigation, both of Erica's parents were polygraphed and passed.

Suspicion later centered on Christian John Gabriel, then 29, who was reported to have been driving a van in the area around the time Erica disappeared, along with his girlfriend Jan Marie Franks and his friend Clifford Butts. In 2004, Gabriel confessed to striking Erica with his van near Glengarry Drive and Powhattan Place, saying he heard a thud, saw a dog run off, and found the girl's body in the road. He said he and his passengers, under the influence of drugs, drove off with the body and buried it in a shallow grave. Gabriel led investigators to the alleged strike site and later to Huffman Dam, claiming he buried Erica there, but searches found nothing. He gave multiple, sometimes contradictory, accounts over time regarding who was present, who was driving, and where the body was buried, also naming Eastwood Lake and Caesar Creek State Park as possible burial sites; none of these searches recovered remains. In 2005, Gabriel was sent to prison on charges of gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence, and was released in 2011. He was arrested again in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2023 on unrelated assault and drug charges, which did not produce new evidence in Erica's case.

Jan Franks, who died of a drug overdose in 2001, was also a focus of investigators; she had reportedly refused to cooperate with police. Her attorney, Beth Lewis, was later called before a grand jury after the state sought a waiver of attorney-client privilege, refused to testify, was found in contempt, and eventually testified before a secret grand jury in January 2006.

As of recent years, Kettering Detective Amy Pedro leads the case, with retired Detective Bob Green still involved. Renewed searches, including a 2022 search based on a podcast tip and 2025 searches near Huffman Dam by Texas EquuSearch Midwest, have not found Erica's remains. In 2014, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age-progressed image of what Erica might look like at 24.